Federal court turns back Alabama redistricting challenge

Alabama's redistricting battle has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It's up to the Alabama Legislature to resolve the matter.

Wochit

A three-judge federal panel Thursday dismissed a challenge to new district maps approved by the Alabama Legislature last spring.

The judges unanimously ruled that plaintiffs who challenged three Jefferson County districts redrawn under the plan lacked standing to bring their challenge and had failed to provide a standard for the court to consider.

Sen. Bobby Singleton, left podium, and Senator Gerald Dial, right podium, discuss the reapportionment bill on the senate floor at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday May 4, 2017.

Mickey Welsh / Advertiser

A message seeking comment was sent Thursday evening to the Alabama attorney general’s office, which represented the state in the case. Attorney James Blacksher, who represented plaintiffs in the case, said Thursday evening the issue would likely come back after the next Census.

"It leaves the question open for 2020," he said.

The Republican-controlled Legislature in 2012 approved redistricting maps that black legislators said “packed and stacked” black voters, who tend to vote Democratic, into a handful of districts. That, they argued, made it hard for them to form alliances with like-minded white voters and muted their voices in the electoral process.

Republicans who drew the maps said they were trying to follow the then-operative provisions of the Voting Rights Act and to restore population in majority-minority districts, many of which lost population between 2000 and 2010.

The three-judge panel upheld the maps in 2013 over the objection of U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, who wrote that the standard used by the Legislature amounted to a “racial quota.” The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the panel to reconsider the maps in 2015, with Justice Stephen Breyer writing that the court needed to look at the individual districts, not the map as a whole.

Under that standard, the panel in January ruled 12 districts unconstitutional and ordered the Legislature to come up with a remedy. Legislators ended up adjusting 25 of 35 Senate districts, and about 70 of 105 House districts, reducing racial polarization in most districts.

But Jefferson County Democrats objected to the districts in their area, saying Republicans included legislators who lived outside the county to give the GOP a majority of legislative seats in Jefferson. The Black Caucus argued that the “partisan purposes of the Jefferson County gerrymanders in the instant action would violate many of the constitutional standards that have been proposed to the Supreme Court.”

The judges disagreed, writing that plaintiffs brought forth to sustain the claim did not have standing. The judges also wrote that the assertion did “not support a conclusion” that Republican legislators drew the districts “in an invidious manner or in a way unrelated to any legitimate legislative objective.”

The plaintiffs could appeal the ruling, though it was not clear Thursday evening if they intended to do so. The court has already approved special elections under the new map.